Tuesday, December 20, 2011

I know that this is the season to give rather than to receive, but I have to tell you I've been doing a lot of receiving lately!

Marly from Samplers and Santas had a giveaway last week - I won! Marly gave me a choice of 2 different band boxes - I chose this one with a house and trees.

Inside the box were goodies! I knew she was enclosing the clove studded pear but she surprised me with 2 Yankee Candle wax melts, a mini tin cookie cutter and 4 pieces of faux fruit.

I have a collection of mini tin cookie cutters that I usually put on my kitchen tree - I didn't get to it this year, so next year this tree cookie cutter will be a new addition. For now I'm tucking it into some greenery on a shelf.

The pear has found the nest of my resident partridge. (I think it's a peahen, but we'll pretend partridge)

Marly, Thank you so much for all the wonderful goodies, I will treasure them.

Joanne was giving away several items, I was so lucky to receive one of her feather tree kits. If you follow Joanne, you will know that she is always teaching this feather tree as a class.

I would love to take a class from Joanne - and meet her too - but we live about 8 hours apart. Joanne included everything I needed in the kit - including the glue! Her instructions were wonderful and after a couple of hours I now have a wool feather tree.

I should really thank Joanne's new kitten, Quentin for picking my name - Thank you Quentin! Anytime your older brothers are being mean to you, come on over. But you know that you'd have 2 older brothers here too! Thank you too Joanne for a wonderful kit!

My next Thank you goes out to that sneaky Linda from Parker's Paradise. Linda sent me a package that included this cute little pillow that she stitched and a pot holder/hot pad.

Linda is obviously Santa's helper and knows that my pot holders are in terrible condition! I need new ones desperately, but I can never find ones that I really like. I'm baring all in showing these horrible looking pot holders to you all!

These are going in the garbage. Thank you Linda for sprucing up my kitchen!

Finally, on to the winner of my Pass it Along Giveaway -

Pam, From Antique or Notyou are the winner! The random number generator picked your number. Look for an email from me!

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Last week, I won a giveaway from Diane at Lavender Dreams Too blog. Diane gave me 2 stocking ornaments that she made and included inside an Organic Lip Balm in Peppermint from www.econaturalsoap.com. Her intent with her giveaway was that the winner pass along the second stocking. I am more than happy to pass it along!

I've tried to come up with some absolutely ingenious way to pass this along and I'm not coming up with anything great, so.....I'm adding to the giveaway! I purchased this adorable little wax tart snowman face from Brandy at The Lil' Prim Cabin on Etsy. His eyes and mouth are coffee beans! You will receive the stocking with lip balm and the snowman wax tart.

In order to win,

1. you need to live in the USA(not sure about shipping the beans outside the country)

2. be a Follower of my blog

This is going to be a quick giveaway - I'll draw a winner on Tuesday night - make sure I can contact you!

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

I finally got our main tree up over the weekend. Between having 2 of our 3 kids sick, 5th grade basketball games/practices, 7 & 8th grade basketball games/practices, attending the high school games and a TON of basket orders I'm WAY behind.

I found these great beeswax cones on etsy from Bethany of Natures Flame. I purchased the empty cones and Bethany surprised me by filling one of them with sweet annie and rose hips. LOVE how it looks on our tree.

The idea for these cinnamon stick stars came from Pinterest. I used hemp cord and wrapped the 3 sticks tightly together. Behind this ornament to the left you can see some handmade tin icicles that I bought from my tinsmith friend at Sauder Village.

The only other ornaments are dried orange slices, muslin stars and a paper chain.

Are you wondering yet why I titled this post "The Naughty List"? Would you believe that this adorable little ball of fluff is a holy terror?

He's knocked over the tree in my last post twice, he's unplugged the tree in this post twice and he's taken baby Jesus hostage from under the tree, I'm still looking for baby Jesus. (This manger scene is fabric and Baby Jesus is a flat stuffed oval). When our kids were younger, I never added the baby Jesus to the manager scene until Christmas day to reinforce to them the meaning of the day. Maybe Shadow knows that Baby Jesus shouldn't be in the manger yet.